Monthly Archives: July 2008

Trying some new things out with search

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I am trying a few different formats for making the site searchable. I am trying a search box at the top of my site on the city pages, over on the right-hand side. This seems to be the ‘standard’ position of most good sites, so I will give it a try and see how people like it. I have also been attempting to de-clutter the site a little bit lately.

Traffic seems to be down just a tad from a few weeks ago, but then, if you look at any good trends repots (I like google trends) it shows a big spike in most rental markets right about the middle of July, and then it tapers of a little bit. I assume that since we are getting close to school-time, students will start looking for places soon.

Looking for good roommate stories

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I think just about everyone has a good roommate story, or nightmare to tell. I sure have mine. I lived in a house in college (many years ago) with 9 other roommates. It was a big house, but with 9 other souls within arm’s reach of me, I almost went crazy. The room I lived in was separated from the next room with a large piece of plywood. There was never a clean dish in the house, and at any given moment there was some big drama or girlfriend/boyfriend fight going on. Seems like the police were there about every other night for some kind of noise complaint. I think there were also 3 dogs and several cats in the house.
Sometimes I wonder how I got through that year. I finally moved out and got an apartment of my own – all to myself.
Yesterday, I was surfing around and tried Google’s “Street View” service – if you haven’t tried it, you must! You can basically drive down city streets in virtual reality – and I drove past this old house I lived in with the 9 other roommates. It still looks the same, but only one car out front this time, so I am guessing it was bought and is not being rented out to college kids.
Anyways, the point of this post is that I would love to hear any nightmare roommate tales – and post them on the site here. I am about to create a ‘roommates’ section for the site (due to popular demand) and I am sure people would appreciate a few good stories about the psycho roommate! You can use my contact form to send me your story!

Accommodations Winter Olympics Vancouver

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Ok, I know it is still a few years away, but I am starting to think about the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver. I am not the only one – I am already starting to get a few “housing wanted” ads on my site for that time period. People are obviously planning ahead, and want to make sure they are covered with a place to stay.

Our site here is a great starting point for either looking for accommodations for the games, or posting your rental!

Vancouver can be quite expensive, and who knows what will happen when the games come around. I’m sure prices for rentals will be quite inflated.

Wouldn’t it be nice to secure your rental now?

Website down today

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Hi everyone,

Canadarentals.net experienced about a 5 hour outage today.   I knew it was serious when my web host’s site didn’t come up either, but that also made it difficult to figure out why.    I learned early this afternoon that it was due to a power outage at their datacentre.   I was a little miffed that they didn’t have a backup power source, as most good web hosts do.

I let them off the hook a bit when I learned it was a massive power outage in Vancouver, so most everyone in that area, including me, had no power, and no website.

You can read the article about it here

Again, I apolgize for the downtime.   Looks like we’re back up and running.

For some geeky, website is down humor, please see the following video – it’s funny (warning – it has a bit of ‘language’ in it)

Signs of life

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Am I seeing some signs of life in the Canadian rental market?  I guess that’s a matter of how you look at it.  For me, traffic is up, listings are increasing, and life is good.   I am hearing that the vacancy rate is a bit higher now than it was not so long ago, especially in the western cities.

I guess this isn’t as good for landlords and property managers, in that they might have to work a little harder to find renters. It also depends a bit on exactly where you are geographically, but in general, I am sensing a shift.

I am also seeing a nice increase in listings especially in the market of executive, or high-end homes.

Just an observation.   We’ll see how the rest of the summer pans out.